Conquering Procrastination

Why is it that women tend to put things off that they do not like to do? Procrastination can be a source of great anxiety and unfinished business can lead to even more anxiety. Ponder the main reasons why women avoid getting things done.

Creating excuses but calling them “reasons”

Mixing up the concepts of “trying” and “doing”

Being indecisive

Actively looking for distractions

Harboring negative emotions

Being a perfectionist

If it is a struggle to resolve projects and tasks, take out the assumptions by defining what is important to the goal, and resolve to fix this behavior. Steps to successfully conquering this behavior include clarifying end goals, asking yourself why you postpone tasks, reminding yourself of the benefits to be achieved from eliminating procrastination, availing yourself of basic tools, and sidestepping common pitfalls that contribute to putting off necessary tasks. Procrastination is not a problem of time management or planning. Procrastination can be obliterated from your life by making sure you are effective at the job, not efficient at tasks that go in the wrong direction.

Start any project or task with the end in mind. Checklists have a strong emphasis on getting your to-dos out of your head and into a systematic list. Any sub task or step that does not serve the end will waste time. Activities that do not serve that end purpose are wasteful. Keeping such tasks in a project will only divert you from more productive activities. If you are already prone to procrastination, tighten your timelines by eliminating unnecessary tasks.

There’s no faster way to waste time than working blindly without thinking about the big picture and doing things that won’t make an impact on the future. Aside from eliminating unnecessary time eaters, ask yourself why you procrastinate. Recall objectively instances where procrastination has surfaced. What caused it? It is likely that the root cause and contributing factors of procrastination will be identified. Then resolve those factors. One will regain a sense of control after following these steps which result in reaching goals in ways never thought possible.

What is the root cause of your procrastination? Is there anxiety that a project, service, or activity will not be well-received? If so, what can you do to allay such concern? Would communication with a stakeholder to clarify objectives or strategy (i.e. to resolve concerns) be beneficial? Make the first decision and make a probability tree. If this is the case, attack the tasks associated with the decision points. Is the procrastination really a function of undecided priorities? Is the object of your procrastination properly prioritized? If the task really is not properly prioritized, consider deferring the task, but remember to communicate that fact to all stakeholders. Alternatively, the genesis of your procrastination could be a perfectionistic approach that only precipitates action that is unrealistic to achieve. Remember your end goal and that a half-decent plan violently executed is better than the best idea never executed. Lastly, the absence of good planning will fail to highlight what is an inherent shortage of the actual time and resources needed to complete a project. Hence, what appears to be procrastination might just be absent or poor planning and not seeing the true goal. Once priorities are determined, all plans must assign time needed for each task. Plan.

The benefits to fixing procrastination are enormous: relief from stressful mind cycling around one topic, freedom to navigate to the next priority, freedom to address personal and household tasks, opportunities to think about strategy and ability to execute next priorities. Whether one frames the benefits of resolving procrastination in the context of benefits or costs avoided, the resolution is the corrective action that is identified from the root cause analysis.

Tools to fix time management problems include time planners, checklists, project plans, delegation, etc. Any planner can be divided and used to allocate required tasks the amount of time that they require. A checklist also allows you to visually simplify the tasks into concrete steps that can be ticked off following each task completion. Breaking a complicated or arduous task into many pieces via a checklist can simply trick the mind into thinking that execution is simpler and more achievable than one would think were the task represented as one monolithic unit. Simple tasks that do not require technical skill or strategic input should be delegated away.

Make sure to sidestep common pitfalls. Data can be your friend or your enemy. Data usually has a purpose, so use data to support your strategy. Only include it if it is relevant to the task. Analyzing data is not necessarily a good use of your time if you do not have the technical skills to decipher it. If you do use a checklist, employ it as a tool to support defining objectives that tie into your strategy. Remember that accomplishing items on your checklist is beneficial only if you have aligned those tasks with your overall strategy or goal.

Procrastination can be a caused by factors other than poor discipline. Ask yourself the question “why?” several times until you have identified the root cause. Remember that there are a variety of potential reasons why procrastination occurs, and also remember the old adage that “working smarter not harder” can solve problems with timely resolution of objectives.

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